M83 Artist Profile
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M83 is the electronic music project of the French artist Anthony Gonzalez. He and former member Nicolas Fromageau founded the group in 2001 in Antibes, France. M83’s style owes a lot to the shoegaze genre, in that there is much emphasis on tonality, extensive use of reverb effects and often softly-spoken lyrics at times submerged in instrumentation. M83 was named after the spiral galaxy “Messier 83”.

For the third album released by M83, Before The Dawn Heals Us, Gonzalez decided to part from Fromageau (after an emotionally distressing tour for Dead Cities). Currently Anthony Gonzalez records mainly on his own(Nicolas Fromageau started Team Ghost in 2009), often with the help of his brother Yann Gonzalez, vocalist/keyboardist Morgan Kibby, guitarist/bassist Pierre-Marie Maulini, and drummer Loïc Maurin.

Just after the Before the Dawn Heals Us US tour, Anthony Gonzalez decided to take M83 in a more ambient direction (as heard on some earlier M83 tracks) and started to write and record a collection of ambient works. The relevance of digital music (from creation to sharing), gave him the idea to call the project Digital Shades Vol. 1, and to make the album part of an ongoing series.

In December 2008, M83 supported Kings of Leon on its UK tour. In January and February 2009, M83 supported The Killers across USA tour dates and toured with Depeche Mode on its Tour of the Universe in Italy, Germany, and France.

The double album Hurry Up, We’re Dreaming was released on 17th October 2011, through Naïve, produced by Justin Meldal-Johnson (Beck, NIN, The Mars Volta, Goldfrapp) and including contributions from Zola Jesus, Brad Laner (from 90’s band Medicine) on guitar, and the vocalist Morgan Kibby. The album was preceded by the track “Midnight City” released in July 2011. The Midnight City Songfacts reports that it became M83’s first hit in the UK, helped by its selection as the theme to E4’s reality TV show Made In Chelsea and its usage in a Victoria’s Secret ad campaign as well as the BBC’s London 2012 Olympic Games coverage.